JANIS SHARPE

We would all love to come up with a magical formula that would make relationships better. It would be great to have a tangled, distressed marriage “fixed” with a three step formula or some other quick solution. Relationships, however, take time and effort.

[caption id="attachment_495" align="aligncenter" width="470"] by Brent & Janis Sharpe[/caption]
"Statistics show that nearly 50% of marriages end in divorce (US Census Bureau, February 2002)."
PRE-MARITAL COUNSELING can help couples avoid becoming part of that statistic. LCC offers pre-marital counseling here in Tulsa, OK. AND if you are...

I recently had a client lamenting the fact that her mother didn’t seem to know how to get beyond surface deep. That no matter how much her daughter wanted to share with her on a deeper more intimate level, the mother would always revert to surface talk. The daughter was frustrated by the inability to have a quality relationship with her mother and the judgemental nature of their conversations.
I found myself saying to her, “You, know some people only live three inches deep. They will not allow themselves to go beyond that depth for fear of touching on issues or emotions that they don’t know how to deal with.”

It’s been said that art reflects the culture. If that is true, there seems to be a very interesting trend occurring. Two of the women nominated for a Golden Globe Award for best actress in musical or comedy are women that are 58 years of age. And the interesting part is that the primary role of the character they play is not as someone’s mother. These women are portrayed as vibrant, beautiful women who are interesting both intellectually and physically. While I am not necessarily endorsing either movie, this idea of older women being interesting and attractive is a bit bizarre for a business who considers aging fatal for women.

It’s that time. The stores are having the biggest sales of the year! Television commercials show us everything that our loves ones desperately want for the holidays. Hallmark, telephone companies, and even coffee companies show us how perfect the holiday is. They show happy families that do anything just to be with each other for the this season. Unfortunately, for some of us, that doesn’t reflect our reality. Holidays can be an extremely painful time either because we don’t have family or because we do have family!! Here are some tools to help prepare and help make the holiday season as pleasant as possible:

Grief is messy. It’s unpredictable, it’s confusing, it’s painful, and it can be surprising. Many adults who are nearing middle-age are experiencing grief: grief over parents that comes long before death. It is not the loss of their parent, it is the loss of the parent that they knew.

God is comfortable with process. In the first chapter of Luke it says John the Baptist “grew and became strong in spirit.” In the second chapter of Luke it says “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man.” Our culture seems to have lost the concept of growth and process. We want to be able to just “be there” or “arrive.” How many times do we sit in counseling with people who are frustrated because things aren’t changing as quickly as they would like them to? Yet, as much as we would like to see progress and change happen quickly in our lives and relationships, I have to believe that God allows some slow growth for a purpose.

One of the greatest stressors of life is managing our money. A study I read a few years ago said that 90% of couples who were divorcing said that money was their number one problem. However, the average income of those couples was significantly above the poverty line. This suggests that it’s not necessarily how much we bring home, but how we manage it that’s the problem.

In our years as marriage counselors, one of the things that grieves us over and over is how many wonderful, well-meaning couples do things that sabotage their marriages. They can be praying and believing for all the right and best things for their marriage, but their behavior actually works against all that they are praying for.
We talk a lot in our marriage seminars about how to build our marriages, but if we are tearing them down at the same time, it’s a little like bailing water with a leaking bucket. Here are a few of the things that we see that are counterproductive to our marriages: